Studio Kura, based in Nijo, Itoshima, presents its August resident artists’ exhibition, featuring work created by 13 artists during month-long stays in the area. Participants from 10 countries work across painting, photography, animation, performance, illustration, mixed media and wearable art, revealing how Itoshima’s landscape, culture and summer atmosphere have influenced their individual practices.
Encounters with Itoshima’s sea and rice fields, the intensity of summer light, local festivals, Japanese culture and folklore provide starting points throughout the exhibition. The works also trace what the artists saw and felt during their stays, along with insights that emerged as they adapted to a different environment—one of the distinctive qualities of residency-based practice.
An artist talk begins at 14:30 on Aug 22 (Sat.). Visitors can hear directly from artists with different cultural backgrounds about what they discovered in Itoshima and how those experiences developed into their work.
Participating Artists
Florencia Aise — Argentina
TADA IMA — Painting
Through people, animals and landscapes, Aise explores presence in the current moment rather than waiting for what comes next, alongside ideas of freedom and connection.
Mira-Alina Schmidt — Germany
Mu — Performance
Using plastic bottles collected from the shore and her own body, Schmidt examines the order and disorder, control and uncertainty that emerge within silence.
Saskia Kretzschmann — Germany
Fragments of Summer — Illustration
Rice fields, insect sounds, summer heat and festival nights are layered with childhood memories and nostalgia in Kretzschmann’s impressions of summer in rural Japan.
ChaeYeon Hong — Korea
Vivid Surfaces — Painting / Mixed Media
Hong transfers impressions of Japan’s intense summer light, plants and sea colors onto a range of materials, including cardboard, shells and carved wood.
Michelle Mandoki — Mexico
In the current of changing things — Painting / Mixed Media
Drawing on Itoshima’s sea, rice fields, greens and blues, cicadas and dragonflies, Mandoki works with watercolor, acrylic and water. The project expresses a process of accepting a new environment and being changed by it.
Diego Muñoz Olivar — Mexico
VISUAL MATTERS — Poster / Graphic Design
After traveling for a year from Hokkaido to Kyushu, Muñoz Olivar arranges documented signs, logos, sculptures and drawings into posters examining the visual noise that fills Japan’s streets.
Anushka Balyan — India
Where the Sea Opens — Painting / Illustration
Beginning with the idea that Ryūgū-jō, the Dragon God’s palace, lies beneath the sea between the Meoto Iwa rocks at Futamigaura, Balyan brings Japanese folklore together with Itoshima’s coastal landscape.
Juliana Ronchesel — Brazil
See the Wind, Hear the Silence — Mixed Media
Through repetitive handwork using thread, fabric, paper and wood, Ronchesel draws attention to subtle changes in wind, silence, the body, memory and time.
Nicolas Verdier Ladouce — France
Mauricel in the City — Animation
This quietly melancholic science-fiction short follows an alien visiting an uninhabited city on Earth. Verdier Ladouce presents a sequence produced during the residency.
Blake Hobson-Dimas — Canada
Nobody’s Baby / Everybody’s Girl — Wearable Art
Inspired by the traditional Mexican China Poblana costume and the Japanese kimono, Hobson-Dimas has created two wearable works exploring family, identity and growing up.
Yelitza Maldonado — United States
Evolution — Painting
Drawing on experiences in Itoshima and encounters with new techniques, Maldonado depicts curiosity, discovery, emotion and the growth that comes from stepping beyond familiar surroundings.
Jamieson Moore — Australia
Where the Stream Begins — Photography
Working with black-and-white film and darkroom printing for the first time, Moore captures Itoshima’s soft, peaceful stillness, creating the sensation of being immersed in water.
Harrison Wyrick — United States
The Cold War, Aliens, and Dream Analyst – Scene 1 — Animation
Wyrick presents three animations made during the residency, combining short pieces about violence, love and humor with a scene that leads into a longer-form project.
- Aug. 22, 2026 (Sat), Aug. 23, 2026 (Sun)
- 11:00~17:00
- Free entry
- Studio Kura
- 586 Nijo Matsusue, Itoshima City, Fukuoka
- Website